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8/12/11

Ride Home 8/12

It's finally the weekend and I'm pretty happy about that. I feel like I've been complainy lately, so I'm going to try not to do that right now. I can't remember any particular grievance that befell me on the ride home, so I guess that's good.

Sometimes you stop at stop signs. It sort of slows you down. A lot.

Sometimes you see French people, or maybe French-Canadians. It was a father and son and they were getting thoroughly honked at as they wended their way across Prospect and 34th and M. (A quick googling of the dad's bike brand reveals that they're probably quebecois.) Anyway, welcome to DC. They had this aura of total nonchalance about them that I both appreciated and was infuriated by. I suppose it's easy to be jealous of the carefree.

No crashes crossing Lee Highway. That puts me in the top 1% of bicyclists in Arlington. Speaking of crashes, I really worry about getting nailed by another bicyclist as I cross the Custis trail from the Marriott parking lot. Sometimes I try to roll out to the other side of the trail (and pretty much leave myself in the middle of street), but for the most part I stay where I'm supposed to stay and just expect some careless moron to barrel into me. This sounds suspiciously like complaining, so I'm sorry.

This bike is dirty as well. I have a long weekend of bike cleaning ahead of me. Chain also sounds wonky. I've never been entirely convinced that this bike was put together properly. If I had more mechanical aptitude (as in, any mechanical aptitude) I'd take things apart and put them together again.

Do you know Mr. Faux? I've seen him on a bumper sticked in Rosslyn for the past two days. I want to open up a restaurant that pretends to serve Vietnamese food and call it Faux '79 or something. Actually, that's only my second favorite fake Vietnamese restaurant name, with the first being Dien Bien Food.

Relatedly, I don't even like Vietnamese food.

I like to ride right inside of the outer (closer to the travel lane) stripe of the bike lane. This keeps me the farthest out of the door zone. It also makes it less likely that a car will pass me by too closely in the right lane, since I'm almost in the right lane. I rarely ride in the center of the bike lane, since according to ancient Sumerian prophecy, that's bad luck. The ancient Sumerians were really quite progressive in their transportation policy. (Did you know that most extent cuneiform texts were originally from StreetsblogUruk?)

I think I'm going to try to get myself out on some kind of fun group ride this weekend, most likely on Sunday. I think that'll be good.